


Jar of Stars

by LilliRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff and Angst, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-08 22:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17989784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilliRonan/pseuds/LilliRonan
Summary: There weren’t a lot of things that could easily get Tony Stark riled up. Or rather, there weren’t many mundane things that managed to get him riled up. On the very, very short list of completely normal things that managed to get Tony’s weak heart beating faster than it should was:*His friends trying to take care of him when he could take care of himself.*The wait in line for coffee when he was out and really needed a caffeine pick-me-up.*People asking him questions about his personal life.And more importantly than any of the others,*Soulmates and anything to do with the subject.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to draw off of a couple of different ideas from soulmate AUs in this, and we'll just see how it goes. It's been a long time since I've written anything. 
> 
> If all goes well, I'll try to update at a regular pace.

There weren’t a lot of things that could easily get Tony Stark riled up. Or rather, there weren’t many mundane things that managed to get him riled up. On the very, very short list of completely normal things that managed to get Tony’s weak heart beating faster than it should was: 

*His friends trying to take care of him when he could take care of himself.  
*The wait in line for coffee when he was out and really needed a caffeine pick-me-up.  
*People asking him questions about his personal life.

And more importantly than any of the others,

*Soulmates and anything to do with the subject.

He’d heard the speculations his entire life about what his reasons for refusing to talk about it. In reality, it came down to multiple things that would take way too long to explain in one sitting with every person who wanted to know. Soulmates were an intricate and widely unknown system (one of Tony’s many issues with the whole ordeal) with multiple moving parts. 

First there was the meter, a small arrow imprinted somewhere on your body that indicated how much danger your soulmate was in at any given moment. When the arrow was all the way to the left, there was no danger at all, but in reverse, if it was all the way to the right, then the person was in imminent and possibly fatal amounts of danger. There was no way of discerning how the meter decided the danger level, or even what the meter _considered_ danger. 

Then there was the communication module. It had a much more scientific name than it actually warranted, in Tony’s opinion. The ‘module’ was just the system of writing on your own skin, and that same writing showing up on your soulmate’s own skin. There were some mysteries around the module that no one had managed to uncover yet, one of which being that it didn’t work just anywhere on your body. For example, writing on your arms or legs was sure to show up on your soulmate’s skin, but writing on your face or feet never showed up on anyone but yourself. Even writing on your torso was a gamble as there had been reports of soulmate couples that could communicate using their torsos, and also reports of couples who couldn’t. 

There were a lot more questions than there were answers, and most people had taken to the mentality of _‘we don’t know how it works, it just works’_. Tony hated not knowing how it worked. He’d written on his arms nearly his entire childhood hoping that someday someone would write him back. They never did. 

He had an infinite amount of theories about why no one else’s words had ever shown up on his skin. Some were wild, and some were reasonable, ranging anywhere from ‘ _my soulmate must not have any hands, and therefore cannot write_ ’ to ‘ _I don’t have a soulmate at all_.’ 

Then there was the matter of his meter, or rather, meters. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to be born with two, maybe even three meters – one for each soulmate. But Tony’s were odd in that one seemed to constantly be set to the far left, and the other, more worryingly, was always set to the far right. Neither meter ever fluctuated in the slightest. 

Tony didn’t talk about soulmates. He’d go so far as to say he tried not to even think about soulmates. If he were being dishonest, he’d say he never thought about them at all. He’d given up his quiet dream of meeting his soulmate around the time he’d started college, between the weird circumstances surrounding his meters, the lack of writing, and Howard’s constant harping in his ear, ‘ _A soulmate is a distraction – remember that they would only hold you back. It’s lucky that yours never write._ ’ 

No, there weren’t many regular things that managed to get Tony riled up, but soulmates and anything regarding them were firmly on his list. Suffice it to say that when a small doodle of a star on his lower arm appeared, he’d almost dropped his coffee on the floor in surprise. He’d checked his meter immediately after, and the arrow was ticking just a little farther up by a notch or two. 

With shaky legs, he sat unsteadily onto the sofa in his workshop. He uncapped a pen and after only a few minutes of hesitation, he drew several smaller stars around the larger one that had shown up on his wrist. 

Almost immediately, there was a response written in neat, but jagged text mostly in all caps, _Is that really you?_

There weren’t many ways it could be interpreted, and Tony knew that the likelihood of the statement meaning a generic ‘are you really my soulmate?’ was pretty slim. The person who was writing him likely had someone in particular in mind that they were talking to, as if he’d communicated with this person before. It could be referring to the third soulmate, he reasoned, but if they had communicated with each other before, then how was it that Tony had never seen any of it? He deliberated only a few seconds before writing back.

_I don’t know who you think I am, but I’ve never written with you before._

There was just over an hour of wait time during which Tony would be loathe to admit he did little else but watch his arm in silent anticipation of what the person on the other end of this bond would say. It was simultaneously the best and worst feeling in his life – on one hand, he’d finally managed to find his soulmate, but on the other hand, there were a lot of peculiar circumstances that made him anxious to think about.

He’d been so deep in thought that he nearly missed the response,

_I think you might have been the third we were looking for. I’m sorry it took us so long._


	2. Time Lapse Lifeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We catch up so that everything can progress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story is really just a self indulgent piece, so there might be discrepancies or contradictions or mistakes. Just thought I should give everyone a heads up for this ride.
> 
> Italics are Tony, Bold is Bucky, and Underlined is Steve.

Meeting Steve Rogers was a little like walking into a dream Tony had as a child, like he’d gotten a chance to jump into the psyche of his five year old self. As an adult, it felt surreal to see someone he’d idolized at one time, and to realize he was just another person. He was in full uniform, decked out just like the posters he used to have on his bedroom walls. He was also a huge pain in Tony’s ass.

The fact that his sudden reappearance had corresponded with Tony finally making contact with one of his soulmates left a weird taste in his mouth. It was like he’d woken up and the entire universe had rearranged itself around him, as though he’d opened his eyes and everything in his room had been flipped to a mirror-version of his bedroom. Despite the oddness of everything happening, Tony had taken to penning his newly-acquired bond several times throughout the day.

It was little things like, _The line for coffee is way too long. Don’t they know coffee is a necessity?_

Or sometimes it was, _I don’t know half as much as I want to about anything important._

Anything that popped into his mind, he wrote. There were a lot of reasons he shouldn’t write whatever came into his mind, but there were also several reasons in favor of it too. This was a good way for his soulmate to get to know him. Due to the fact that neither of them knew who the other was, Tony had the freedom of being able to say whatever he wanted. Sometimes that meant a lot of advanced formulas and schematics were hastily doodled across his soulmate’s skin, but he hadn’t heard any complaints yet.

Sometimes his soulmate wrote back.

There were small things like, _Who decided it was a good idea to put so many advertisements on television?_

Other times it was, _I feel like I’m drowning in how big everything is and I can’t shake the feeling I don’t belong here._

So maybe it wasn’t the best idea to write whatever came into his mind, but his soulmate didn’t seem to mind reciprocating the gesture. Sometimes that meant a lot of breathtaking, beautiful artwork scrawling all over his skin, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain. His soulmate was a gifted artist, but he also figured that the other might appreciate the anonymity given that association with Tony Stark usually meant life threatening circumstances.

For example:

The battle of Manhattan. Aliens, near-death experiences, and potential world-ending destruction might sound like a good time to him, but he was almost a hundred percent sure that most (or any) sane person would disagree.

All of this rant through Tony’s head as the smoke cleared and the newly formed Avenger’s team regrouped for Shawarma. Nothing says ‘We lived’ like eating together at a hole-in-the-wall Middle Eastern restaurant. Tony was in the middle of trying to ignore the way Steve kept looking at him, as though he hadn’t really seen him until this exact moment.

“Something on your mind Cap?” He asked, trying to keep his tone flippant and unconcerned.

Steve finished his food, swallowing it down with a shake of his head, “No, no- I just… I know I apologized already, but… I was just thinking that maybe… maybe I could take you up on that offer? To stay at the tower, I mean once it’s finished. That is, I’ll probably go between there and SHIELD, but-”

“The invitation is open. Come and go whenever you want. It’s still pretty early in the planning stages though.” Tony popped another bite of food into his mouth, eyeing Steve with only minimal weariness. The smile he got in return felt unwarranted given how he’d cut the other off mid sentence, but something settled low in his chest anyway. He pushed down the unexpected warmth, but returned that smile easily.

So began what Tony would later claim to be his own personal ‘Series of Unfortunate Events.’

* * *

The rest happened too fast for any of them to really grasp what had happened. One minute, everything was good, and the next, everything was a mess. The Avengers were pulled in five different directions, and Tony was left trying to pick up the pieces.

Besides his own slew of personal issues and actions gone awry (with and without the help of the others), SHIELD had fallen apart from HYDRA infiltrators, and Steve had gone AWOL to deal with the reappearance of his soulmate, the Winter Soldier.

This was what Tony was spending his time thinking about at the moment. How everything had managed to catch fire and burn down in the time it had taken him to blink. How things had been left between Steve and him when Captain America and the Winter Solider had left him to die in the cold in Siberia. The Accords had been a disaster, and there were definitely things that Tony had already given himself a tension headache overthinking on that particular topic, but that wasn’t what really got him in regards to everything that had fallen at his feet.

Of course he knew that Steve would pick Bucky. How could he expect him to do anything else? James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Rogers were one of the best known soulmate duos in recent history. It was difficult to reconcile everything he’d read, the stories he’d heard about Bucky Barnes with what he knew about the Winter Soldier.

It was harder to reconcile how he’d thought of Steve Rogers with the man who had kept his parent’s killer a secret and then nearly beat him to death. It was still raw, still sore, and probably going to be a nasty looking scar depending on how everything panned out. With time and space, Tony knew that the Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes weren’t the same person. He knew that attacking Steve’s soulmate wouldn’t have had any result where Steve stood by while Tony and Bucky hashed it out.

Everything fell like dominoes. He replayed it in his head again:

He found out his parents were murdered, and realized it had been the Winter Solider who had killed them. He found out Steve had known. He let his grief and anger and betrayal get the best of him. He attacked the Winter Solider in front of his soulmate. Both the Winter Soldier and Captain America fought back, hard. He lost the fight. They left.

Tony’s in his workshop alone in an empty tower.

He wished he hadn’t given up drowning his sorrows in alcohol. The cherry on top of this whole horrible affair was that his communication with his newly acquired soulmate was becoming something of an ordeal in itself. Sure, he’d been busy and hadn’t written as much as he normally did, but it seemed like his soulmate was also distracted with something themselves. Unfortunately, this meant they weren’t talking very often.

And then there was the last thing they’d written to Tony, just a few minutes ago: _I found our third again. He’s finally back._

On one hand, Tony was happy with the confirmation that his third soulmate was alive and okay. He’d noticed fluctuations in both meters on his arms recently, which was a surprise to him. (It was also sometimes concerning given how often both meters seemed to hit a ‘high’ rating on the danger scale.) On the other hand, it stung a little bit to think about his soulmates being together somewhere without him. There were strings tugging at something in the back of his mind telling him there was something that he wasn’t realizing, but it was a feeling he had fairly often, so there wasn’t much of a reason to delve into something that was going to emotionally compromise him more than he already was.

He tapped a pen against the table he was slumped at before tearing the cap off and scribbling a quick, _Glad you’re both safe. Your meters are going to send me to an early grave._

That had to be good enough, he supposed, satisfied that they were finished. His first soulmate (Soulmate 1 and 2? Alpha soulmate and Beta soulmate? The artist and the unknown?) rarely directly responded with more than a one-line remark. Suffice it to say when he saw a scrawl appear on his other arm in small, neatly filed letters that were definitely _not_ the artist’s, he nearly fell off his stool.

**_You’re one to talk. Do you know how often your meter goes to 10 on us?_ **

Which, okay, yeah, he could see how that might have been something he’d overlooked until this very moment. He was in crisis nearly every time he saw either of his soulmate’s meters go past seven lately, but danger was so second nature to him that he’d almost forgotten he had a meter on their arms too.

 _I think I can venture a guess,_ he wrote back. Short, simple and reveals nothing - exactly what Tony normally aimed for.

 ** _Do you just have a knack for trouble, or are you employed to deal with it?_** It seemed this soulmate was a lot chattier than the artist. If the tone was anything to go by, he was dealing with someone as dry and sarcastic as him, which was never a good thing for anyone involved.

_Self employed seeker of trouble, actually. I thought to myself ‘Why not be both?’ I’ve got the talent for finding disasters, I might as well have some fun with it._

**_You’re cheeky. Cute._ **

And just like that, Tony Stark knew he was going to be on one hell of a roller coaster, off the rails because his soulmates were going to be trouble. Maybe as much trouble as him. 

_Cute? I think I might resent that summation._

It was flirtatious and light and nothing like anything Tony had been able to have for himself in what must have been a decade by now. It felt like it had been a long time, and this felt nice. This made him feel like maybe everything could be okay, if he just kept his head above water.

_I've told him about some of the things you've written me. I think I'm going to have to agree with his 'summation.'_

_Leave it to me to end up with people who are plotting to destroy my reputation by calling me 'cute.'_

He couldn't bring himself to really be upset over any of this, of course. The teasing continued for the rest of the night until everyone decided to turn in to get some sleep for the next day. His soulmates were travelling, they said, and it was a long trip. Tony had an early morning the next day as well trying to square everything away so the rogue Avengers could come home. He felt open and raw, but be also thought that maybe this could be enough for now. Just for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for the chapter was [Foreigner's God by Hozier.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTn1pFRXOTo)

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a prologue, but the music I used to write for it was [Gris Pt. I by Berlinist.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChABHE_TSjs)


End file.
